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A study of how class and race have intersected in American society - above all, in the 'making' and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book examines how European immigrants became American and 'white' in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighbourhood.Read more...

Introduction: "Something in the 'Atmosphere' of America" --
Part 1. Longshoremen. The logic and limits of solidarity, 1850s-1920s --
New York: "They...helped to create themselves out of what they found around them" --
Waterfront unionism and "Race solidarity": from the Crescent City to the City of Angels Part 2. Steelworkers. Ethnicity and race in steel's nonunion era --
"Regardless of creed, color or nationality": steelworkers and civil rights(I) --
"We are determined to secure justice now": steelworkers and civil rights (II) --
"The steel was hot, the jobs were dirty, and it was war": class, race, and working-class agency in Youngstown --
Epilogue: "Other energies, other dreams": toward a new labor movement.

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

"A superbly written, intellectually exciting and pioneering book ... Nelson weds detailed research with indepth interviews, oral histories and his own first-hand experience ... With grace and acuity, Nelson unites his far-ranging concerns [and] successfully argues that race and ethnicity have long been central issues in the labor movement ... This book has the potential to profoundly change how we read and think about American history."--Publishers Weekly "This study moves labor historians one step closer to the overarching synthesis that has eluded them for over 30 years ... This is an important piece of scholarship that deserves wide attention and debate."--Choice "A powerful and disturbing book about the nature of race relations in working-class America."--Peter Cole, History: Reviews of New Books "A valuable contribution to the increasingly acrimonious debate over the meaning, content, and significance of white racial identity in American labor history."--Steven A. Reich, Journal of Southern History "By placing working-class white racism and black resistance strategies at the forefront of his study, Nelson's Divided We Stand reinforces recent scholarship on the interplay of class and race formation in nineteenth and twentieth century United States and African American history."--Joe W. Trotter, Journal of American Ethnic History "A landmark study of race and trade unionism in longshoring and steel from the rise of heavy industry in the late 1800s to its decline in the 1980s... Nelson digs deeply into archival sources and oral interviews to describe real workers and their shop-floor experience in compelling detail."--Frank Towers, The HistorianRead more...